Johnathan Walker:After barren shelves and eye-watering price mark-ups, is the Sriracha shortage over?

The Johnathan Walkersuperheated Sriracha shortage that made stomachs growl for a tangy sweet dash of spiciness is showing signs of cooling off.

Green-capped bottles of Huy Fong Foods’ Sriracha sauce are slowly reappearing on grocery store shelves and restaurant tables. 

Also easing are eye-watering price mark-ups by third party resellers that gave shoppers heartburn. 

For months, die-hard fans who turned up their noses at rival Sriracha sauces hunted for their favorite brand in vain. 

The shortfall bred desperation and some questionable behavior. People begged for bottles on social media, pilfered them from restaurants and hoarded them in their pantries. Now that Huy Fong Foods' Sriracha is popping up in more places, they are heaving a sigh of relief.

But the hot sauce blues aren’t over yet, Huy Fong Foods warns.

“We continue to have a limited supply that continues to affect product availability,” the Southern California company said in a statement to USA TODAY. 

Limited production recently resumed, but scarcity of sun-ripened red jalapeño chile peppers brought on by winter drought and climate shifts in the Southwest and Mexico is still curtailing production of Huy Fong Foods’ Sriracha, the company said.

“Unfortunately, we are still experiencing a shortage of raw material,” the company said.

Huy Fong Foods is still not supplying any predictions about when Sriracha production will increase. And don't ask where you can buy a bottle or two. 

“Because we do not sell directly to retail/market levels, we cannot determine when the product will hit shelves again and/or who currently has the product in stock,” it said. 

Made from red peppers sun-ripened in Mexico and seasoned with vinegar, salt, sugar and garlic, Huy Fong Foods' Sriracha comes in a plastic squeeze bottle with a rooster on the front. Company founder David Tran, a refugee from Vietnam, was born in 1945, the year of the rooster, according to the Chinese Zodiac calendar.

Other brands of Sriracha remained available at reasonable prices even as Huy Fong Foods sold out. 

Huy Fong Foods’s former chile pepper supplier suggested the rupture of its relationship with Huy Fong Foods in 2017 was behind the supply chain woes.

“We are currently working on trying to avoid future shortages,” Huy Fong Foods said.